"Nothing concentrates the military mind so much as the discovery that you have walked into an ambush."

-- --Thomas Packenham

La Triviata

In 1827, a certain drummer in the British garrison at Gibraltar had, in 14 years of service, accumulated - and survive - a remarkable 25,000 lashes, roughly one for every 4.9 hours he had been in the Crown's service.

When, during the Vietnam War, Allied troops began covering windows with netting to keep grenades form being tossed through them, the Viet Cong responded by wrapping the grenades with string and festooning them fishhooks, which resolved the problem very nicely.

Aside from their usefulness in sticking the enemy, cavalry lances often proved quite handy during reconnaissances, for they could be used to probe the depth of rivers and streams in order to search for practical fords.

During the Spanish Civil War volunteers for the Republic from the barbers' union organized the Batallon de los Figaros

Winters were so severe during the Korean War, that American troops trying to dig fox holes occasionally found they had to chip little depressions in the frozen ground and urinate therein, so that the warm urine would soften up the earth sufficiently for them to permit them to hammer an entrenching tool through the muck to get to the unfrozen layer beneath.

When the highly talented Czech general Ian Zizka died in 1434, his skin was tanned and used to top a drum, so that he could continue to lead his troops.

A year after Pearl Harbor, the United States Caribbean Defense Command had a strength of 119,000 troops, half of them stationed in Panama, where they were defending the canal from Japanese attack, which was by then completely impossible.